Counting the Cost: Build Your Own Trip Ledger
Build your own trip ledger
Every number on this site comes from one habit: we write down what a trip costs while it is costing it. A ledger is not accounting. It is a notebook, paper or phone, with a few categories and the discipline to use them at every stop. Here is ours, free to copy.
The categories
- Fuel, tolls, campsites, propane, dining, stops and supplies, shared costs, and a line for fees, including the annoying ones. Our sample trip uses exactly these.
- Add a notes column. Six months later, the number will not explain itself; the note will.
- Record the miles and the nights on every trip. Without them, the totals cannot be compared.
The two honest comparisons
Cost per night is the total divided by the nights. Ours: $1,958.78 over 13 nights is $150.68 a night. Cost per mile is the total divided by the miles: $1,958.78 over about 1,104 miles is $1.77 a mile. Those two numbers let you compare a short trip and a long one, a membership trip and a park-rate trip, without fooling yourself, and they expose what actually drives your costs. For us it is fuel at $0.78 a mile, and it is not close.
Membership changes the math, so say so
Our campsite line was $70 for 13 nights because our campground membership dues were prepaid. That is a real saving on the road and a real cost off it. If you compare trips, count the dues into the membership trips, or label the line the way we do: dues prepaid, not counted. Either way, say it out loud, or the comparison lies politely.
The line everybody forgets
Stops and supplies: $376.62 on our sample trip, more than dining. Snacks, ice, the store you stopped at for one thing. Small money, daily, outruns the restaurant meals you planned for. Count it from day one, or your ledger will always come in mysteriously light.
Start tonight
You do not need our categories or anyone's app. Write down tonight's miles, tonight's costs, and one sentence about the day. The ledger that exists beats the perfect one that does not, and after three trips it starts answering questions you did not know you had.
